Overview of JRAN's concerns

Since 2012, significant changes have been made to Canada’s treatment of refugees. For decades, Canada’s refugee system worked towards protecting people in danger and other humanitarian goals. The new changes, however, do the following: discriminate between individuals based on their country of origin or how they arrived in Canada; create serious challenges in the refugee determination process, which could lead in some cases to the deportation of individuals to their home countries and a real risk of persecution or worse; and limit certain humanitarian protections. In addition, since 2012, a half century's old system of providing healthcare coverage to people seeking refugee status has been cut, thereby stranding thousands of people who are lawfully in Canada without emergency or life-saving healthcare.

The Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act (formerly Bill C-31), which became law in June 2012, has many severe impacts on a person’s experience in the Canadian refugee determination system.

Shortened timelines:

Timelines to submit a refugee claim and to prepare for the subsequent refugee hearing have been significantly shortened for certain refugee claimants. The new timelines do not provide enough time for newcomers to seek legal advice, to complete their applications accurately and completely, or to gather evidence to prove their claim. This could lead to a person not having a fair opportunity to explain or prove their case. As a result, refugees facing real danger in their countries of origin could be refused protection in Canada.

Limits to rights of appeal:

Some newly-created legal categories of refugee claimants, including individuals from DCOs and DFNs,are barred from making an appeal to the Refugee Appeal Division. The Refugee Appeal Division is a new decision-making body whose purpose is to hear appeals from claimants whose claims have been denied, in order to review the case and correct mistakes. Those refugee claimants prevented from making such an appeal do still have the opportunity to apply to the Federal Court to review their cases, however the new Act permits them to be deported before their application is heard by the Court.

Humanitarian and compassionate applications and pre-removal risk assessments are and have been vital safeguards to ensure that refugee claimants who were denied refugee protection will not experience undeserved or disproportionate hardship, and will not be placed at risk upon return to their country of origin.

The pre-removal risk assessment is designed to ensure that a person being removed from Canada is not being sent back to a country where he or she would be face persecution, torture, cruel and unusual treatment or death.

A humanitarian and compassionate application is a request by an individual for an exemption from the normal requirement to apply for permanent resident status from outside of Canada. A decision-maker considers whether the applicant would experience “unusual and undeserved or disproportionate hardship” if he or she were required to leave Canada and apply from abroad.

Under the new Act, refugee claimants who receive a negative decision from the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) become ineligible to make an application for permanent residence on humanitarian and compassionate grounds for 12 months, or from making an application for a pre-removal risk assessment for 12 months.

The DCO scheme was introduced as part of the sweeping changes to Canada's refugee determination system in June 2012. Its purpose was ostensibly todistinguish between refugee claimants from “safe” countries and those from “unsafe” ones. In reality, the DCO scheme has created a two-tiered system in which refugee claimants from designated countries are denied the procedures and protections to which other claimants are entitled.

Refugee claimants from a designated country are not entitled to the same legal process as refugee claimants from non-designated countries. A DCO claimant has less time to prepare for his or her refugee hearing at which a decision-maker will determine whether he or she is entitled to Canada's protection. A DCO claimant is also denied certain procedural protections, such as access to an appeal, which are available to many non-DCO claimants.

The Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has been given wide-ranging discretion to add a country to the DCO list. The Minister is not required to consult with human rights experts or to determine whether the country at issue is actually safe for all or some of its citizens.

Refugee claimants from 37 countries are now affected by the DCO regime. One group particularly affected are the Roma people of Europe. Despite significant discrimination, persecution, and even violence against the Roma in several European countries, these countries have now largely been designated DCOs, making it extremely difficult for Roma refugee claimants in Canada to have a proper and fair refugee determination process.

For more information on the Roma, you may review the following resources:

The Minister of Public Safety may "designate" two or more refugee claimants who arrive in Canada without the appropriate Canadian visas or documents if the Minister believes that they have paid someone to help them enter Canada, or if they lack the papers necessary to prove their identity in what the Minister believes is a "timely manner."

The implications of being a DFN are severe.

All designated claimants aged 16 or older face automatic and mandatory group detention for a minimum of two weeks. If a designated claimant cannot prove his or her identity within the two weeks, then he or she will be detained for an additional six months, with the potential for a further six months after that. There is no requirement for a court to judicially review the imprisonment in between.

Children under the age of 16 may also end up in detention upon arrival. If a child’s parents are detained, the child must either stay with their parents in detention or may be placed in foster care by child protection services.

Designated claimants who are eventually granted refugee status are denied the right to apply for permanent resident status in Canada for five years. One consequence of this restriction is that successful refugee claimants will be unable to obtain a travel document or sponsor family members’ immigration to Canada for a period of at least five years. As a result, the DFN scheme could separate families for an extended period of time, even where Canada decides that the claimant is entitled to Canada's protection.

Unless some form of health care insurance coverage is provided to them by the Canadian government, refugee claimants who arrive in Canada are unable to access hospitals or other health care services without paying out-of-pocket – a financial impossibility for the vast majority of refugees.

Canada’s "Interim Federal Health Program" (IFHP), which was established in 1957, provided interim federal health insurance coverage to refugee claimants and other newcomers to Canada. Under the IFHP, claimants had access to coverage until they were accepted as refugees and became eligible for provincial healthcare or, if they were not accepted, until they exhausted their legal options to remain in Canada and were removed from the country. The coverage provided to refugees through the IFHP was similar to the coverage received by Canadians on social assistance programs like Ontario Works.

In June 2012, the federal government made sweeping cuts to the IFHP.

These cuts are having a serious impact on newcomers to Canada. The relative degree of the impact depends on the newcomer's unique personal circumstances:

Refugee claimants whose claims have been rejected: Refugees who have been denied their claim at the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), and have exhausted their right to judicial review, receive no medical care coverage, unless their condition poses a public health risk (i.e. communicable diseases or infections) or a security concern for Canadians (i.e. psychotic conditions where a person has been identified as being a danger to others). These claimants are not eligible for coverage even when they cannot be removed from Canada due to a government-issued moratorium on removals to particularly dangerous countries like Afghanistan or Iraq. This category of claimant is not eligible for health care coverage despite being able to live and work legally in Canada.

Refugee claimants from DCO countries:Refugees claimants who come from countries that the Minister has designated as safe receive no medical care coverage, unless their condition poses a public health risk (i.e. communicable diseases or infections) or a security concern for Canadians (i.e. psychotic conditions where a person has been identified as being a danger to others). A person from a DCO will not receive coverage even in the case of an emergency, such as childbirth or a heart attack. This category of claimant is ineligible for health care coverage despite their legal and proper pursuit of a refugee claim in Canada.

Refugee claimants from non-DCO countries: Refugee claimants, even children, have lost many essential federal healthcare benefits. Refugee claimants no longer have federal coverage for basic vision care, dental care or prescription medications - even life-sustaining medications such as insulin. Refugee claimants from non-DCO countries have lost access to the kinds of extended benefits provided to low-income Canadians.

These changes are not in keeping with the Canadian humanitarian ethic.